School of Social and Political Science

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The 2023/24 Course Change Request for Semester 2 courses will open on 15th January 2024 until 26th January 2024 (Start of Week 1 until the end of Week 2).

As part of your degree at Edinburgh, you have the opportunity to select optional courses to take alongside those that are compulsory for your degree programme. Depending on your area of study, there is a large range of different courses from all over the University available to choose from.

The process of choosing your optional courses and having them added to your student record is known as 'pre-selection'. The process of collecting course choices from students differs from school to school across the University:

Students starting Year 1 in September 2023:

• Year 1 students on programmes run by the School of Social and Political Sciences (SPS) should complete Form C. We strongly recommend completing this form from a desktop browser (Google Chrome works best), instead of a mobile device. If you have any technical difficulties, please clear your browsing history and cache first. 

Before you submit your course choices via Form C, please take some time to watch our video below on how to choose your course options, as well as read the information provided under the section "Guidance for Students entering Year 1 in September 2023"

Students starting Year 2 in September 2023:

Form A is now closed and it is not possible to submit a response. Please contact sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk

• Year 2 students on programmes run by the School of Social and Political Sciences (SPS) submit their course choices via Form A.
• Students on programmes run by other schools: please follow the instructions provided by your own school for pre-selection. SPS does not need to pre-approve your courses.

Students starting Years 3 and 4 in September 2023:

Form B is now closed and it is not possible to submit a response. Please contact sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk

• Students on programmes run by the School of Social and Political Sciences (SPS) submit their course choices via Form B by 
• Students on Politics or International Relations joint degrees (e.g. History and Politics, Law and International Relations) also submit their course choices via Form B as well as following the process of their home school. 
• All other students on programmes run by other schools: please follow the instructions provided by your own school for pre-selection. SPS does not need to pre-approve your courses.

A guide to choosing your course options
 

Further details on the process, forms for completion and associated deadlines can be found below.

Guidance for Students entering Year 1 in September 2023

To view details of courses open to year 1 students in SPS, please visit Schedule J on DRPS. Not all the courses available to you will be shown, only those in SPS, so please ensure you review the Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study (DRPS) to see your full options.

Guide on how to use DRPS to view your course choices 

PDF format: Guide on how to use DRPS to view your course choices 

Guidance notes and Frequently Asked Questions

Word format: Guidance notes & FAQs 

Submit your course choices via our online form:

Form C (deadline 17th September 2023)

How to choose your courses (new and continuing students)

A normal year load is 120 credits (most commonly six 20 credit courses). For most degrees, your courses should be distributed evenly between Semester 1 and Semester 2.

Once you establish what your compulsory core courses are, you will be able to make your optional course selections.

When selecting your courses, always check the following:

• you meet all prerequisites of the course
• the year and level of the course are appropriate

Which compulsory and optional courses are open to you is dependent on your degree programme and your year of study. You can view this information using the University’s Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study (DRPS) pages. This is the method recommended by the school.

• Read our SPS guide on how to use DRPS
• Access the School's DRPS pages

When completing the online pre-selection form, you will need to list ALL your compulsory and optional courses for each semester, including those from other schools.

Please indicate your options in order of preference, and list more than the required 120 credits, in case your first choices for optional courses are over-subscribed.

Due to the volume of forms being processed by the UTO, no confirmation emails are issued when you have been signed up for your selected courses. If there are problems with your selections, we will contact you via your student email address. Please regularly check your University email account. Please also check your junk and clutter folders in case any of our communications end up there.

Guidance for PPE Students Entering Years 3 and 4

All honours PPE students are required to submit their Politics and Economics course choices via Form B and submit a separate form to the Schools of PPLS with their Philosophy course choices. The School of Economics is not responsible for signing you up for your Economics courses.

If you are unsure of how to list your choices in Form B, please email us at sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk.

Timetabling information and SPS course listings

In SPS teaching activities will be campus based and in-person. Any exceptions to this will be detailed on the course listings page.  

Finalised timetabling information should become available in late July/August 2023

You can access our course listings documents via the links below. These will show you the draft timetabling details for courses within SPS.  These documents will not show the full details of all the courses available to you, so please ensure you review DRPS to see all of your options. 

View course listings

• Pre-honours course listings 
• Honours course listings 

Deadlines for submission of Course Choices forms

Students should make every effort to complete their course choice forms by the deadlines below. Forms will remain open after these deadlines have passed, up until the 5th of September. Priority will be given to those who submit by the deadlines stated above, with those submitted later being actioned after the on-time submissions.

We urge you to submit as soon as you can to avoid disappointment.

• entering Year 1: 17th September 2023 (no longer accepting submissions)
• entering Year 2: 24th July 2023 (no longer accepting submissions)
• entering Year 3 or 4: 6th July 2023 (no longer accepting submissions)

If you have submitted your online form by the deadline, your course allocations should appear on your MyEd via EUCLID by the end of August 2023 (or by the end of Week 1 for new Year 1 students).

FAQs

We will keep our course selection FAQ document as up-to-date as possible. Please note that things are subject to change.

Where any amendments are made, we will let you know below when and where the amendment was made.

FAQ document 

Forms for completion

Below you will find links to our course pre-selection forms:

Priority will be given to those who submitted by the deadline. Please note that Form A and Form B are no longer accepting responses. Please email the Undergraduate Teaching Office at: sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk

Form Name and Description	Link to online form	Deadline to submit
All SPS students entering Year 1	Form C (NOW CLOSED)	17th September 2023
All SPS students entering Year 2	Form A (NOW CLOSED)	24th July 2023
All SPS students entering Year 3 or Year 4 (Including those on single or joint degrees with Politics or International Relations)	Form B (NOW CLOSED)	6th July 2023

Changing Optional Courses

Students can request a change to their optional courses up until the end of Week 2 of each semester by completing an online form. Students may be placed on a waiting list for courses that are full.

More details: Course change requests (Opening on 15th January 2024 until 26th January 2024).

Contacts/Queries

If you have any questions about the online form, credits or the rules for your programme, or are unsure about any other administrative matters not covered in our FAQs, please email sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk.

If you need advice on any academic matters, please email your Personal Tutor or Student Adviser in the first instance. You can find your Personal Tutor or Student Adviser's email address on your MyEd page.  If you are unsure of who to speak to, please contact the Student Advice and Support team, and a Student Adviser will be able to help you.

Contact the Student Advice and Support team

If you are unsure about who to contact about a query then please email the Undergraduate Teaching Office at: sps.pre-selection@ed.ac.uk